Docking the ship was a remarkable display of mingled chaos and order. Big Mike’s directives were joined by those of people on the docks, and while sailors scrambled over every surface in what seemed like random patterns to Kaldalis, the captain’s directions seemed to be exactly adequate to keep everything on track. The ship was brought to a smooth and even stop, and tethered to the dock without incident.

Shortly after that, Kaldalis suspected it was the last time he would apply “without incident” to any event for the rest of his time in Baimer.

Demriv emerged from belowdecks with Onirioago in tow, and Kaldalis flew into a terrified panic for the brief moment it took before Gavinkim emerged right behind them, carefully watching her movements. Kaldalis was still anxious that she might escape - if she vanished into the city, he had no idea how they’d ever find her - and so moved across the deck to join them as they headed for the lowering gangplank to the dock.

“Nervous?”

Kaldalis hadn’t even noticed Bangen hanging behind the group. He had almost entirely forgotten that the red-purple Vathon researcher was on the ship. Though he supposed he wouldn’t have seen much of anyone who wasn’t interested in fishing, considering how he’d elected to spend most of his trip.

“Oh no, not at all,” Kaldalis lied. “This is obviously the moment when all the stress leaves my life forever and everything can go back to normal.”

“Good,” Demriv snapped at him, not even turning to look. “You’re here. Now I won’t have to send the guards to scour the ship for you.”

Kaldalis was about to ask why in the most sarcastic asshole way he could think of, but realized that he didn’t actually know anything about the legal system in this world. For all he knew, being a dick to Demriv might actually be an offense that gets him imprisoned.

Though if that was the case, he was likely already doomed. But Demriv got them down the gangplank and shouted for the nearest guards before Kaldalis could in-for-a-penny himself into saying something snarky.

“What’s the trouble?” the guard said as they approached. There were three guards near at hand - apparently to oversee the docking of the ship - and three more visible from here on the dock. Two of the three approaching them were Finnian, with a Talsar woman in the middle. It was her that had spoken, though Kaldalis wasn’t sure if it was because she was the leader, or because of the Finnians’ characteristic aversion to the spoken word.

“No trouble,” Demriv said, putting on the official council voice she’d had during the meetings Kaldalis had been to, and putting away the more hostile tone she’d been using non-stop since discovering Onirioago’s imprisonment. “I have four people to pass into the custody of the Zaran justice system.”

“Wait,” Kaldalis said quickly. “Four?”

“One accused,” Demriv said, addressing the guard instead of Kaldalis, “and three alleged witnesses.”

“Can she do that?” Kaldalis asked Bangen.

“Technically?” Bangen said, her red-purple skin turning pastel pale. “In certain cases, when someone who is falsely accused is exonerated, anyone who bore false witness can face their own punishment. Because the charges were first made by a frontier council instead of a formal part of the justice system, this might be one of those cases.”

Onirioago let out a bark of laughter at that, but Gavinkim slapped a large hand down on her shoulder, guiding her onward and positioning his body so that she couldn’t turn around and snark directly at Kaldalis and Bangen. There wasn’t a fruit basket in the world large enough to thank Gavinkim for his service in this one moment, let alone the entire rest of the time Onirioago had been in custody.

Regardless of Gavinkim’s protection, Bangen seemed to have suddenly gone from curious calm to even more nervous than Kaldalis, and he found himself worrying about how this was about to go down. Bangen’s behavior was normally very mild - even meek - but under stress she was surprisingly hardcore. When she thought Kaldalis was willingly involved in the harvesting of Deacon Tetra she was ready to throw down with him. She had headbutted Onirioago to stop her escape. Was she crazy enough to turn to violence again now?

Luckily, he didn’t need to find out.

“That’s not for me to decide,” the guard said with a smirk. “Nor for you.” Despite her mirthful tone, her scaled tail lashed in obvious irritation. “Only a magistrate can decide when witnesses need to be in custody.”

“Then lead on,” Demriv said, the irritated edge starting to creep into her voice again. “Though you will be feeling quite foolish when one of them slips through the cracks on the way.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the Talsar guard said, turning and making a gesture.

At her command, her Finnian companions dropped into position flanking Bangen and Kaldalis at the rear of the group. They were gently - but insistently - herded along after the Talsar guard leading the way into the city.

Kaldalis had gotten a pretty good look at Baimer when he first arrived. Before being deposited in his body, there had been something of a cutscene that flew him up above the buildings. The city was built along the side of a hill that sloped down to the sea, and so he was able to look up and see a lot of the city’s features from here. The city itself was pretty generic; stone and wood structures that looked like a vaguely Italian architectural style, with a lot of the larger structures topped with domes, and many carved facades framed by stone arches.

It looked pretty at a glance, but the city was showing some amount of age and neglect on closer look. The cobbled streets were dirty, and some of the buildings showed signs of vandalism, some of it just scratched paint and damaged plaster, and some of it large painted symbols that didn’t mean anything to Kaldalis. He suspected it was part of some larger questline that he might uncover if he pursued the larger questline.

The guard led them to a building that wasn’t too far from the docks. They traveled up the incline from the docks only a hundred yards or so before they were ushered into a building. Its seaward wall was marred by one of those painted symbols - it looked like a kite shield surrounded by small radiating triangles - but near at hand was a grumbling blue-scaled Talsar in paint-stained coveralls mixing a large bucket of whitewash.

Inside the building was quiet. It had a low wooden ceiling - just barely above Kaldalis’s horns - but somehow the click of boots on the stone floor still felt like it was a deafening echo. Despite the medieval appearance of everything else, the area immediately in front of the entrance was a designated area for a queue, cordoned off with a zig-zag of velvet ropes. Beyond that was a counter that looked like the front of the DMV office, though the building’s strange aura of gravity made it clear that this wasn’t to be taken lightly. There were eight guards in the room, all alert and at attention, but making no obvious reaction to the entrance of the group surrounding their prisoner.

The Talsar guard who led them here gave a sweeping gesture before leaving, not clarifying at all what they should be doing, but Demriv took the initiative to turn up her nose at the guard and march her way towards the front. Onirioago let out a soft snicker as she followed behind, forcing Gavinkim to step quickly to keep her from getting out of arms’ reach. Kaldalis and Bangen brought up the rear again, and stayed close.

The queue ropes were empty, and only one clerk was behind one of the desks. Despite that, Demriv led them through the zig-zagging velvet ropes, walking back and forth along the length of the room. Kaldalis would have thought it a hilarious spectacle, if it weren’t for how serious the subject at hand was - Onirioago’s imprisonment. The clerk seemed to just be bored, watching them go back and forth, his eyes following them like they were a slow-moving game of tennis.

“Name?” He asked when they finally arrived at the counter.

“Demriv, council member of Panbu,” Demriv said, “with four people to be taken into custody for trial.”

The clerk was a human with dark hair who had the same glazed look of someone who was going through the motions at the end of a long and boring day. Kaldalis knew that look well - he’d seen it in the mirror more than once when he was Dylan the accountant.

He had a few more questions for Demriv, including the charges against Onirioago, the names of the people involved, and a number of other details. Despite her earlier attitude, she dropped all pretense and answered the man’s questions with enough honesty that not even Gavinkim made any protest.

The clerk filled out a form, and gestured to the nearest of the guards, who stepped up to take custody of Onirioago. She made no protest, going along with the guard in such a way that made Kaldalis nervous. Why wasn’t she protesting? Didn’t she have some escape plan? Maybe she wanted to get the guards to let their guard down by going along quietly?

As soon as he considered that, he started to fear that the performance was for him, not the guards. Did she want him to overreact and make himself seem crazy? If she could develop a narrative that he had it out for her, the trial might go her way. He was obviously anxious that only one guard was taking her away, but nobody else seemed concerned, least of all the still-bored clerk.

“Why isn’t this a bigger deal?” he whispered to Bangen. “This is Geas Venom, right? That’s a serious crime, isn’t it? Shouldn’t there be some kind of uproar?”

“This is all going to be a really big deal to you,” Bangen explained quietly, “but for all of these guys, this is just another day. No matter how serious the crime, these guys are professionals. This is what they do all day.”

“And the others?” Demriv demanded, gesturing at Gavinkim, Kaldalis, and Bangen. “Aren’t you taking them into custody as well?”

“In my opinion,” the man said calmly, “they aren’t a flight risk.”

“And why not?” she pressed, raising her voice. “I’ll have you know this one is… one of them.” She spat the word as she pointed to Kaldalis.

“I know this is probably news to someone serving their first time on a frontier council,” the man said with a sigh, “but sometimes things don’t work out your way, and your clout is insufficient to move those who hold authority over you. I’m sure this is strange for you, being on the other side of it.” Despite the snark, the whole statement read like Ben Stein doing an eye drop commercial.

She let out a huff and stormed away from the clerk, following the guard through the side door to reach Onirioago. There was an audible argument breaking out as soon as she was through, but as soon as the door closed, it returned the room to utter silence again.

“This is proper civilization,” Gavinkim said, looking back at Kaldalis and Bangen. “There are rules here, and force of arms enough to enforce them even against the two of them. It pains me to let her out of my sight even now, but I have faith in Zara’s justice system. Everything is going to be okay.”

“I hope so,” Bangen said with a shudder.

“Sign here, please,” the clerk said, offering the form he had been filling out to Gavinkim. “This indicates that everything on the sheet is true and accurate to your knowledge.”

Gavinkim gave a nod and examined the form carefully before signing.

“Thank you,” the clerk said, putting the form on top of a stack of papers, and then putting the stack into an envelope, and then putting the envelope into another, larger envelope. “All parties for whom imprisonment has been deemed necessary are in the custody of the city now. The trial will take place…” he trailed off, eyes unfocusing for a moment. “Wednesday the 16th, three days from now. All witnesses are required to be present by ten o’clock. It is the magistrates’ opinion that it is far safer to be at the court by nine-thirty in order to fully complete check-in before that time. The trial on the case of the State vs Onirioago will be held in room C of the West Court Hall of Justice by Judge Potwarkep, starting at ten-thirty, expected to end before eleven. Due to the nature and jurisdiction covered by this case, it cannot be rescheduled.”

It was all a boring rehearsed speech, which still shocked Kaldalis. The stakes seemed too high for this to be all there was to it. As the man finished speaking, Kaldalis got a little quest on the right side of his vision notifying him of the date, time, and location. Focusing on it he even got a sense of the direction to the courthouse where it would be held.

In three days, the nightmare would be over.

Unless Onirioago had one more trick up her sleeve. Then he would be awakening to a brand new one.